


Joie de Vivre

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Gemma Doyle Trilogy - Libba Bray
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:32:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1639079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity is looking for something, and she doesn't know where to find it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joie de Vivre

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for Essa's and Ainsi's encouragement, Maartje's readover, and Meredith's remark that she "really wanted to see more magical Victorian lesbian schoolgirl fic." :)
> 
> Written for llyfrgell

 

 

ï»¿

~*~

One _could_ say it was a "surprise" when, early one otherwise unpromising Thursday morning, Gemma awoke to Mrs. Juniper knocking on the door.

"Miss Doyle!" she called in the excited, girlish voice which Gemma knew wasn't her real voice at all. "Wake up, please, there's been a guest for you!"

No matter how hard she wracked her sleep-addled brain, Gemma couldn't think of anyone who would call this early in the morning. "Er, all right," she called back. "Give me a moment and I'll be right out." Hurriedly, she tumbled out of bed, her feet tangled in sheets, her hair a leonine mess. She didn't bother with a corset--after all these years, she still had trouble putting it on by herself--but she did pull on one of her favorite frocks and laced up her boots as quickly as she could. Her hair she gazed at helplessly for several minutes before she pulled it back into a knot at her head with hairpins. It was hardly an improvement.

She walked carefully downstairs to the parlor, where Mrs. Juniper would surely be regaling Gemma's guest with long, un-entertaining stories of her childhood spent in New York City. When Gemma arrived in the parlor, however, it was to find Mrs. Juniper in her armchair, smiling awkwardly as she fiddled with the lace on her armsleeve--and a _man_ sitting in the sofa across from her, his hat pulled low down on his forehead so that she couldn't see his face, whistling a tune Gemma only faintly recognized--which was more than she could say for him. It wasn't her father, it wasn't Tom or Simon, and it _definitely_ wasn't Kartik. She knew few other members of the male species.

"Hello," said Gemma, trying not to sound as bewildered as she felt. She stood there for another half-second before she curtsied quickly, an afterthought. The man stood and Mrs. Juniper looked up into Gemma's face. Gemma knew she was looking for the answer to whom this guest could be--an answer she wouldn't be able to find.

"This man tells me he is a cousin of yours," says Mrs. Juniper. "Miss Doyle, may I present to you Mr. Fitzgerald Worthington?"

Worthington? Not like--?

The man bowed. "So good to see you again, milady," he said. There was mischief in his voice, which was clearly higher-pitched and raspier than a man's would normally be. The man looked up and Gemma could finally see his face.

 _Felicity_.

Gemma grinned as widely as she could.

"Why, Mr. Worthington," she said, "It's been ages! How have you been? Please, sit down." She took a seat next to Fee on the couch. "Thank you, Mrs. Juniper. This man is indeed my cousin."

Mrs. Juniper looked between the two, sensing something was going on over her head. She didn't stop smiling but somehow narrowed her eyes at the same time. "Well--if you need any chaperoning..."

"I'm sure we'll be fine," Gemma said.

"Remember: no men in your room," said Mrs. Juniper.

Gemma could tell that Mrs. Juniper--the eternally bored widow who owned the boardinghouse where Gemma lived during the school year--was hoping to glean some kind of gossip. "We'll be quite fine," Gemma forced through a smile. "Thank you."

Mrs. Juniper gave Felicity one last penetrating, curious glance before she turned and bustled off to the kitchen.

When she was gone, Gemma and Felicity burst into giggles.

"I can't believe I pulled it off!" said Felicity, pulling off her hat at last. Gemma was surprised to see that her hair was short like a boy's. "I thought I was going to die when she said 'No men in your bedroom.'"

"Yes. It's because I've got _so_ many coming in and out all the time," said Gemma.

Felicity raised her eyebrows. "Have you really?"

Gemma rolled her eyes. Felicity laughed.

"Goodness, it's really you. I imagine this is where the rejoicing and embracing comes in, but frankly I'm terrified Mrs. Juniper will return and think us a couple embracing as a prelude to... something else."

"She's a bit terrifying, I'll give you that," Felicity said. Suddenly, she grinned and jumped up, twirling around. "How do you like my ensemble, by the bye?"

Gemma appraised the new Felicity, from the blonde curls cropped close to her head, to the brown waistcoat over her button-up men's shirt, to her trousers. She smiled, remembering Felicity's promise to buy trousers tailored in Paris, just like a man's.

"You look marvelous," said Gemma. "You really did have me fooled."

"I've got to practice the voice--I still sound like a girl--but otherwise everyone else has been mistaking me for a boy. Well, in Paris they sometimes guess correctly, but here in New York, nobody knows the truth. Besides you, anyway."

"I've missed you so much, Fee," Gemma said. "How _is_ Paris?"

A dark cloud came over Felicity's face, but it was gone in a moment and her cheery expression returned as she sat back down. "It was... an adventure," Felicity allowed. "Just like I've always wanted. Sometimes more than what I wanted." She didn't bother to elucidate. "Enough about me," she continued. "I want to hear about you. What is New York like?"

"Dusty. Smelly. It would be just like London except that it's full of Americans."

Felicity leaned forward. One of her short curls fell into her face. She was just as beautiful and sensual as ever, even dressed as a boy. Gemma felt the sharp sweetness of nostalgia leap up through her chest, and wished, not for the first time, that life was still as simple as it had been the first time she, Felicity, Pippa, and Ann had stepped through that glorious door of light into the realms.

That had been a very long time ago. Nearly five years, actually. So much had changed since then. They were more different now than they had been even when Gemma had said goodbye to Felicity at the train station in London after the end of their last year at Spence. It was almost scandalous how long they had embraced, unwilling to let go of everything they shared, all the little--and big--truths they knew about each other, knowing that any space they allowed between them would soon turn into something as hugely figurative as physical.

Now, the silence stretched between them like a meadow, where Felicity was one unreachable horizon and Gemma was the one opposite.

They--Gemma, Felicity, and Ann--had always promised each other visits, but until today, nobody had made good on any of those promises. "Fee," Gemma finally said, carefully, "it isn't that I'm not absolutely _delighted_ to see you, because I am, but what finds you here in New York, of all places?"

Felicity considered the question carefully before answering, with a curious surety to her voice, "I've had enough of Paris. I'm searching for my own _joie de vivre_ and I didn't find it in France."

"So you came here. To me."

"I came here, and your being here was just an added benefit," Felicty corrected her.

"I see," said Gemma, even though she didn't. "Where are you staying?"

"I'm staying at the Plaza Hotel. It's beautiful. Central Park is just outside the entrance." Felicity nodded a carpetbag sitting next to the boardinghouse's front door. "Only problem is, they won't let me in when I'm wearing this. Unseemly, says the concierge. I have a proper frock in there for when I'm coming in and out of the hotel."

The large grandfather clock in the corner of the parlor struck nine. Gemma suddenly stood. "I've a lesson to attend soon," she said. "I'm so sorry, but I'll have to call on you later."

"Perhaps we shall gallivant through the city," said Felicity, standing as well. "I'm so excited to see it from the perspective of someone who knows it well. The woman who lives next door to me has offered to give me a tour at least twice, but as far as I can see she never leaves her room."

"Well, then," said Gemma. "I'd be most honored."

Felicity bowed again with a large, waving flourish of her arm. "I'll be looking forward to it." She took her hat and flipped it onto her head, then pulled on her overcoat. Gemma walked her over to the front door where Felicity picked up her carpetbag.

"I'm so glad to see you again," said Gemma.

Felicity looked into Gemma's eyes. There was a determined seriousness to her face that Gemma had rarely seen there before. "I've missed you, Gem," she said. "Too much."

"And I've missed you," Gemma replied, her voice quiet. "Goodbye. Shall I see you--?"

"Tomorrow at one?" said Felicity. "For lunch."

"Yes, then," said Gemma. "Goodbye!"

And with that, Felicity was out the door and hopping down the steps like a self-satisfied young man--which, to anyone but Gemma, was exactly what she was. Gemma watched her stroll down the street, her heart beating the same way it always had before an adventure in the realms.

A new, different adventure was beginning and Gemma could feel it down to the marrow of her bones.

~*~

"Isn't it lovely here?" said Felicity, gazing up at the tall, painted ceiling of the Plaza's dining room. She was wearing a normal green frock today, neat and fashionable, and there was a hairpiece on her head that made it seem her hair would fall far past her shoulders if only she were to let it out of its pins. Gemma could tell that she hated it.

"It's beautiful," said Gemma. "How long have you been in New York? You never did say."

"I got here last weekend. It took me a few days to settle in, figure out where you were staying. I had the address, from the letters we used to send, but it took me a while to learn how to get around."

"It's not hard to get used to," Gemma replied, recovering from the scowl her expression had morphed itself into at the words "we _used to_ send."

"It's all a giant square, isn't that right?"

Gemma nodded and took a sip of her tea. It was just right--a new experience for her. "Haven't you been getting my letters, Fee? I never stopped writing. I thought you did."

Felicity swallowed and completely ignored Gemma's question to say, "Of course, after Paris, I don't believe I'll ever want to 'get used to' another city."

"I thought you left because you were looking for something."

Gemma didn't feel like attempting to figure out the enigma of Felicity's post-Spence life just now. Even the letters she had received those first two and a half years of their separation had been mostly filled with none-too-personal chatter about France's charm and the _incroyable_ , wonderful people who were bustling about Felicity's new life. Gemma's own letters had been filled with much of the same, but that really had been all there was to her life at the time--if you took out the strange, empty hole Kartik had left behind, a hole that had yet to be refilled, like a pothole the city authorities didn't seem to care enough about--but Gemma had always had a feeling that Felicity was leaving some important details out. Ann had once written that she felt the same way.

"That wasn't to say that I didn't love it, though," Felicity said wistfully. Her voice sounded as if it were coming from miles away. "I will never love anything as much as I loved Paris."

"Not even raspberry tart?" Gemma asked as she watched her friend take a third helping.

Felicity lifted a forkful to her mouth and swallowed it. She seemed to be considering the bite she'd taken. Finally she admitted, "I might make an exception for raspberry tart."

"It's my birthday tomorrow," said Gemma, apropos of nothing. "You should come to our little dinner party."

"'Our'?"

"My friends here at university and I. I'm sure they'd be delighted to meet you." None of them were as extraordinary as Felicity or Pippa or even Ann, but they were all sweet, clever girls who liked to laugh and liked each other's company.

"All right, then," said Felicity. "Should I wear a dress or could I come as your cousin?"

"I don't think I would be able to call you Fitzgerald without bursting into laughter."

"Felicity Worthington I shall be, in that case!" Felicity took the last bite of her raspberry tart and swallowed it down with another sip of her tea. Gemma intertwined her fingers and rested her hands on her lap.

Felicity looked at Gemma expectantly. "Let's see New York," she said.

Gemma grinned. "Yes, let's."

~*~

Gemma had grown used to the glamorous enormity of Manhattan, but Felicity was so excited by everything Gemma felt like she was seeing everything anew. Here was the pond at Central Park! Felicity told Gemma she could almost strip right then and there and take a swim, she was so warm. Here were the small, expensive, inviting shops on Fifth Avenue! Felicity and Gemma popped into nearly every single one, trying on coats and furs and beautiful, dainty gloves. Here was St. Patrick's Cathedral! Felicity and Gemma were both quieted by its grandiose beauty.

"Can we go inside?" Felicity said in a hushed voice.

Gemma looked sidelong at Felicity's expression of pure wonderment and then back at the gorgeous, looming spires. It was astonishing. "Yes, I think we can."

The cavernous interior was even more awe-inspiring, if possible. It seemed to stretch on forever. Gemma thought of all the people who must have sat and kneeled at these very pews, and all the people who would continue to do so in the years to come. It was a humbling thought.

Felicity looked up and around. She couldn't seem to stop looking. Suddenly, she clutched Gemma's hand and led her to the front of the cathedral, to the altar. There they stood, basking in the dim blue light from the stained glass windows. Gemma wanted to speak, but she didn't know how to say the millions of things she was holding in tight as if underneath a too-small corset, all various ways of saying _I'm sorry, I love you_ , and _I've missed you_. She sent these thoughts out to Felicity in a silent prayer, and to Kartik and Ann and Pippa as well, with a few left over for her mother. They were not the people she was supposed to be praying to, she knew, but these were the people she knew better than she knew any god.

It might have been ten minutes; it might have been an hour that they stood there together. At the same second they looked at each other, and as quietly as they had come, they walked back down the aisle between the pews and back outside.

"I should probably go back and study," said Gemma, making a face.

Felicity nodded. "Mrs. Juniper will be wondering what sordid things you've gotten up to with which men." She stepped forward to embrace Gemma, and when she came away there were tears threatening to spill from the bottoms of her eyes.

"You'll come to dinner tomorrow?" Gemma asked after a moment had passed.

Felicity nodded. "Thanks so much, Gem. I'm so glad you're here." She gave Felicity a quick, soft kiss on the cheek, then, opening her delicate pale yellow parasol to protect herself from the harsh early summer sun, she turned and went the opposite way down Fifth. Gemma, touching her cheek where Felicity had kissed her, watched her dearest friend walk away, her hips swaying beneath the green fabric of her frock.

She had a strange feeling that all was suddenly forgiven between them and that they were as close as ever, not a single word of explanation needed.

~*~

Gemma's closest friends at university were three young women by the names of Molly Parks, Teresa Bennington, and Susan Villa.

Molly was a small, plain girl with dark hair and darker eyes. She was studying English and had been Gemma's first friend in New York. Her cheery extroversion had almost been surprising. They had met in the train station three days after Gemma's arrival, and Molly, separated from her cousin, had asked directions to Central Park. Gemma had admitted she didn't have the first clue, so they went searching together.

Teresa and Susan had come to university already friends. They had known each other their entire lives, and seemed to live exactly the same way. They both had curly, mousy brown hair that they kept tightly pinned at their necks; they both seemed to be in possession of a surplus of blue dresses; they both could spend entire days at the Public Library. They were jolly enough but too close to one another to get too close with anyone else.

None of them were like Felicity, Pippa, or Ann; or even like Cecily, Elizabeth, and Martha. They were a well-meaning breed of their own, girls who hadn't necessarily attended an English finishing school, and girls who had almost certainly never smelled lilacs and their father's cigars wafting through a light breeze in the realms.

Gemma knew that that was precisely the reason she liked them.

They were all sitting in the parlor of Mrs. Juniper's house, talking about the weather and that dreadful essay they had been assigned by Professor Hart, when Felicity was ushered in by Mrs. Juniper.

"Miss Felicity Worthington," Mrs. Juniper announced, sounding a bit annoyed. "Another cousin of yours, she claims."

Gemma nodded. "Thank you, Mrs. Juniper."

Felicity curtsied. She was all frantic, visible energy--her hair, fake as it was, struggled to escape from its bindings; the hem of her frock was splattered with mud.

The woman sniffed haughtily and turned on her heel. She returned a few minutes later with tea, which they all accepted enthusiastically, even though Mrs. Juniper's tea was among some of the worst Gemma had ever tasted.

"May I introduce my old friend Miss Worthington?" said Gemma, motioning to Felicity to sit beside her. "We were at school together in England. Felicity, this is Miss Parks, Miss Bennington, and Miss Villa."

"Very pleased to meet you all," said Felicity, smiling.

"Didn't Mrs. Juniper just say you were cousins, Gemma?" asked Susan.

Gemma and Felicity exchanged a glance. "Well... it's rather a long story, but in a way, we are cousins." Gemma dared not look at Felicity again.

"Second cousins, thrice removed," added Felicity convincingly. Gemma could tell she, too, was trying not to laugh. "By marriage."

"I see," said Teresa. "Goodness, it seems your dress is a bit dirty. It's awful outside, isn't it?"

"It's been raining all day," Molly agreed. "I do miss sunshine, sometimes."

"You should see London," put in Felicity. "There are entire weeks, nay, months, when the sun never manages to break through the clouds."

"I've always wanted to go to London," sighed Susan. "It does sound lovely."

"Lovely if you like dirt or the smell of smoke or constant drizzle," Felicity said. Gemma looked sidelong at her. She looked as if she were planning something wicked and Gemma wished there was a subtle way to pinch her and tell her not to. "It's dreadful, really."

"I miss it even so," Gemma said.

Felicity shrugged and took a sip from her teacup. "To each her own, I suppose."

"What could be better than London?" asked Teresa of Felicity.

"New York," replied Molly immediately.

Felicity shook her head. "Paris is my favorite," she said. "Especially after it rains, and the scent of cigarette smoke is all washed away. I could walk the streets of Paris forever. There was this little bakery across the way from the flat where I lived with my mother and--our friends, and I would awake to the smell of bread every morning. And the people! Never have I met such fascinating, wonderful people. I met a woman who could take anything, _anything_ , and make a sculpture from it. I met a man who wrote the most glorious poetry you could ever hear." Felicity's voice was full of love. Gemma wondered, vaguely, if the people whom Felicity spoke about, were a few of the many she had taken to bed, like she had once promised. A tiny but uncomfortable twinge of jealousy flitted through Gemma's stomach.

"It sounds wonderful," gushed Teresa.

Felicity told stories of Paris and the people she'd met there all the way through dinner, but she did it so charmingly that Gemma's other guests never knew what hit them. Gemma, on the other hand, was not quite so charmed--especially not when she took Felicity up to her bedroom after Molly, Susan, and Teresa had all gone.

"Your friends are so... quaint," said Felicity, falling into an overstuffed armchair. "They seem so innocent compared to--"

"The people you met in France? Esmeralda, perhaps, she of the golden hair and superior paintings? Jonathan, maybe, the man who wooed you until you broke his heart and chose someone else. Who did you choose, Felicity? I remember getting the letter about Jonathan, but you never wrote after that." Not even Gemma knew whence her sudden anger had come, but these were all the questions that had been stirring in her mind since Felicity's surprise arrival.

Gemma sat down in the armchair adjacent to the one Felicity had taken and waited for Felicity to speak.

Felicity was quieted by Gemma's tirade. She sat up in her chair. "I didn't stop writing," she explained, her voice low and contrite. "I have an entire box of letters for you and Ann and... Pippa. I wrote every day. I just didn't send them."

"Why not?"

"I don't know." Felicity looked into Gemma's eyes. "I didn't think any of you would want them anymore. I didn't know if you still wanted to be my friend."

Gemma frowned. "Why wouldn't we have?"

"Well, Ann's letters were so full of the amazing Lily Trimble and all of the famous actors and actresses she was friends with. And your letters made you sound as if you were becoming the world's next great scientist or novelist, with all your lessons and your sweet, innocent, studious little friends."

"You were jealous of us when you were off having fun in Paris?"

Felicity shook her head. She reached up to unpin her hairpiece. "I didn't spend very much time in Paris," she said. "I wandered all around--to Florence, to Barcelona, to Edinburgh. I don't quite know what I was looking for."

"Your _joie de vivre_ ," Gemma offered, stumbling over the French words.

"Yes, that," said Felicity. "But I couldn't find it. I couldn't stop thinking about everything that had happened. I missed you three too much."

"So you came to New York."

Felicity nodded.

Gemma reached over and laced her fingers with Felicity's. Felicity lifted Gemma's hand and pressed her lips, ever so softly, to the top of it.

They sat there together for several minutes, quietly enjoying their reunion. But there was something Gemma had to know.

"The story about the exploding telephone in your mother's flat--is it true?"

Felicity chuckled. "Everything I said about Paris was true." She paused. "Well, everything except for Esmeralda's art. It wasn't a bit superior. In fact, it was absolutely horrific."

"I'd thought so," said Gemma, and the two girls descended into giggles as if they had never been apart. 

 


End file.
